Lessons Learned
1. Empirically, I always start a semester well and then deteriorate, so in future semesters the rational strategy is to front-load the work however much I can. A good experiment here would be to just spend the first month getting as far ahead in the material as I'm able.
2. It's of the utmost importance that I spend the first several hours of the day someplace that isn't my apartment. Somewhere with people around -- because the psychological compulsion to look busy actually does make me get busy.
3. It is astounding how much my will to crank through necessary evils increases by the simple device of making a hash mark on paper every time I complete a chunk of work. Nothing else, just that. Furthermore, this effect is stronger the smaller the chunks are defined.
4. Ignoring deadlines really does work for me better than not, if only because I get at least the same result with less freaking out, but what works even better than that is thinking about the shit I need to do in terms of "buying my freedom" -- asking myself at the outset how many hours I'm willing to pay to get a given albatross off my neck, and then investing them.
5. Always heed the rule of three: however long I think something ought to take, I need to multiply that by three to get my optimal time affordance. Usually I'll come in under this but over the original time, somewhere around the 2x mark with heavy variance -- but it'll prevent me from overbooking, and suddenly instead of seeing my expected free time disappear before me I'll find myself with more of it on my hands.
Bonus lesson: I knew this already, but avoiding things that nickel and dime me to death has an outsized effect on my capacity to deal with things.
2. It's of the utmost importance that I spend the first several hours of the day someplace that isn't my apartment. Somewhere with people around -- because the psychological compulsion to look busy actually does make me get busy.
3. It is astounding how much my will to crank through necessary evils increases by the simple device of making a hash mark on paper every time I complete a chunk of work. Nothing else, just that. Furthermore, this effect is stronger the smaller the chunks are defined.
4. Ignoring deadlines really does work for me better than not, if only because I get at least the same result with less freaking out, but what works even better than that is thinking about the shit I need to do in terms of "buying my freedom" -- asking myself at the outset how many hours I'm willing to pay to get a given albatross off my neck, and then investing them.
5. Always heed the rule of three: however long I think something ought to take, I need to multiply that by three to get my optimal time affordance. Usually I'll come in under this but over the original time, somewhere around the 2x mark with heavy variance -- but it'll prevent me from overbooking, and suddenly instead of seeing my expected free time disappear before me I'll find myself with more of it on my hands.
Bonus lesson: I knew this already, but avoiding things that nickel and dime me to death has an outsized effect on my capacity to deal with things.